On wine and the wine trade in London by Juel Mahoney

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Bois Blond, Parfumerie Generale (limited edition)

I wore Bois Blond for months. Just to get me through. And I believed – because it was so good – I believed the man behind Parfumerie Generale, Pierre Guillaume, had trained as a winemaker.

Well, I was wrong. So why did I believe this? I don’t know whether the sales person had told me this…

Or was it the deep woody, sherry, cognac notes I find in their perfumes? Like a bourbon barrel from Kentucky gives a sherry edge to some Scottish whisky.

Not only that, but the perfumes are numbered without names; just like bin vats for wine barrels in the winery.

Ah well.

I wrote to PG about the wine connection and this is my delightful response:

The father of Mr Guillaume he is a wine collector and as a child PG visit a lot a Chateaux in Bordelais, Bourgogne and Midi of France with his father to discover and taste Wine culture… He share the passion of his father but, never “work” himself in wine making. For information, Mr Guillaume is crazy about woody and oriental note and he’s always working on it a lot, trying to discover newones… He also use a lot of ingredients usually found in food aroma, not only in perfumes.Bois Blond, it is a fragrance of sunny woods with memories of summer dusks, awaiting the summer monsoons.

This is a limited edition perfume, so get your hands on it (if you can). It’s like suddenly finding your own space in the peak-hour crowds. The country in the city. Or a ray of sunshine coming out just the moment you walk outside for your break.